Sometime in the last 20 years or so, the movie industry lost a bit of magic. Once upon a time we hardly had movie trailers on television. Instead, we'd see posters for upcoming movies that would try to snag a bit of our imagination. As much as the script, the actors, the soundtrack... the posters were an integral part of the moviegoing experience. And typically they'd be painted by hand, not edited on a computer or massaged as a photograph. The posters I remember from my youth were just as worthy of hanging in a gallery as they would be hanging on your bedroom wall.
Between 1977 and 1981, I must have had two or three different variations of the Star Wars poster on the walls of my bedroom. They were all in vibrant colors and captured the magic of "a galaxy far far away" better than any of today's movie posters do. It's become so bad that I hardly even look at posters any more because they all look the same — a miasma of faces and logos thrown together by a marketing department somewhere.
During this seemingly bygone era, one of these artists seems to have done an influential movie poster for every movie I loved in that time. Drew Struzan. Through the years, he captured a part of my imagination with posters for Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Big Trouble in Little China, Hook and many many more. It was through his talents I was drawn to many movies in my youth — with his art acting as a Pied Piper tune to lead the way.
The Art of Drew Struzan provides a glimpse into the magic his movie posters captured during his career spanning more than 30 years. But along with that you see the tragic tale of how the marketing machine of Hollywood has left the artistic tradition of movie posters in favor of a fast-food style that makes nearly every modern poster pale when compared to those of the past.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
More people should know of his talents. He was featured on a panel at ComicCon. I will be getting this